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The Egyptian military has been a bystander to what is going on. They were content to stay out of this civilian issue. When it got too great to ignore, they stepped in and turned the reins over to the chief justice of their highest court. It's not a coup per se because the military isn't governing.

The Egyptian military is sort of an independent actor in Egyptian society and politics. As I recall, they do a whale of a lot of the infrastructure building, maintenance, and repair...roads, schools, hospitals. We had the Surgeon General of their Army at Wilford Hall USAF Med Center for 2 weeks when I was assigned there and his presentations during Administrative Grand Rounds were indeed interesting.

The US DoD has a long standing good relationship with the Egyptian military. Search for Operation Bright Star. This is a bi-annual joint exercise including several ME countries. In fact, I seem to recall that Israel either participated or were observers recently.

This article, which is an interview format, then leads you to another URL, about Mr. Meyer's assessment of the Egypt situation ... written two years ago.
In the interview Meyer stated that it seemed as if absolutely nobody read his essay of Feb. 2011. Here are some excerpts from his assessments in 2011, right after Mubarack was unseated.

In Egypt the House of Mubarak has collapsed, and the country's army is dutifully holding things together until a new political structure can be erected. So while the jubilation in Cairo's Tahrir Square is understandable, Egypt hasn't had a revolution. It's had half a revolution, which means the country's future is in play.

Indeed, the uprising in Egypt itself was triggered, at least in part, by the recent popular uprising in Tunisia. And now there may well be popular uprisings in Jordan, Yemen, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and perhaps Iran. There could be popular uprisings in Lebanon, Syria, and even in Gaza and the West Bank. And since information moves around the globe literally at the speed of light, it wouldn't be surprising to wake up one morning, turn on the television, and see scenes of mass unrest in Havana. (And if we do see a popular uprising in Cuba, wouldn't it be nice if the CIA got its act together -- fast -- and tossed a few banana peels under the Castro brothers' feet....)

In short, we have suddenly entered one of those rare moments in history when the world is about to be remade.

Stand back from history, and there's another operating system that's been with us for a long time: Islam. In this operating system, church and state are often combined, and the individual is subservient to this church-state combination -- without the option to opt out. Islam doesn't unleash the entrepreneurial talents of its people, and it discourages intellectual curiosity -- which is why there hasn't been a major scientific breakthrough from the Islamic world in a thousand years. There's one other striking feature of this operating system: it treats women as though they were property rather than people. Simply put, this operating system is incompatible with the modern world -- and that's the glitch. Why is this a problem? Because the most radical and determined leaders of Islam, like their fascist and communist predecessors, wish to impose their operating system on the entire world -- including us.

You really should read the entirety of this piece from 2011 yourselves. Meyer ends with

Back in the Cold War years a lot of our deep thinkers were convinced we'd lose. And we nearly did. But then, suddenly, three unlikely leaders stepped onto the world stage: a Polish pope, a woman prime minister, and an ex-actor from California. Together they threw the switch from playing defense to playing offense, and within a decade we'd won the Cold War. So don't let the pessimists get you down. And if you just can't bring yourself to believe we can defeat the Islamists and win this global struggle, stop by my office and I'll let you touch my piece of the Berlin Wall.

It also occurs to me that the Cold War was ultimately won by ideas, words, and diplomacy, not bullets. It did mean being militarily strong to make the other side believe that a military confrontation would be undesirable. In that regard, I'm not real sure that our paralysis in Benghazi has the bad guys in the ME shaking in their sandals.

The Egyptians are no dummies. The Egyptians contributed remarkable monuments to human ingenuity when they were the center of the ME universe. Again, it was Egypt, in the person of Anwar Sadat, that was the keystone of the only Arab-Israeli peace that gave hope to the ME situation for a while. The most recent protests again bring focus to Egypt. While 100,000 have died in Syria, Egypt has now removed from power both a secular tyrant and a religious tyrant, with far less bloodshed (so far anyway). At their core, the Egyptian citizens and American citizens may have a great deal in common.

G.Clinchy@gmail.com"Know in your heart that all things are possible. We couldn't conceive of a miracle if none ever happened." -Libby Fudim

​I don't use the PM feature, so just email me direct at the address shown above.

This article, which is an interview format, then leads you to another URL, about Mr. Meyer's assessment of the Egypt situation ... written two years ago.
In the interview Meyer stated that it seemed as if absolutely nobody read his essay of Feb. 2011. Here are some excerpts from his assessments in 2011, right after Mubarack was unseated.

You really should read the entirety of this piece from 2011 yourselves. Meyer ends with

It also occurs to me that the Cold War was ultimately won by ideas, words, and diplomacy, not bullets. It did mean being militarily strong to make the other side believe that a military confrontation would be undesirable. In that regard, I'm not real sure that our paralysis in Benghazi has the bad guys in the ME shaking in their sandals.

The Egyptians are no dummies. The Egyptians contributed remarkable monuments to human ingenuity when they were the center of the ME universe. Again, it was Egypt, in the person of Anwar Sadat, that was the keystone of the only Arab-Israeli peace that gave hope to the ME situation for a while. The most recent protests again bring focus to Egypt. While 100,000 have died in Syria, Egypt has now removed from power both a secular tyrant and a religious tyrant, with far less bloodshed (so far anyway). At their core, the Egyptian citizens and American citizens may have a great deal in common.

I think we won the Cold War because we out-spent them to the point of collapsing their economy. The Trident II missile system was the final nail in that coffin. But that really doesn't have much to do with this thread......-Paul

I think we won the Cold War because we out-spent them to the point of collapsing their economy. The Trident II missile system was the final nail in that coffin. But that really doesn't have much to do with this thread......-Paul

Paul, I don't have the kind of expertise to say where funds for military systems should be spent. There's plenty of argument as to how wisely, or unwisely, our defense/military funds have been and will be spent. Could we have won the Cold War with spending more wisely to achieve the same goal of making the enemy determine that armed confrontation was a losing game? Could very well be. On the whole, I'd guess that even the unwise spending was still less cost than waging any kind of bullets war as we have done elsewhere to no avail.

We've already spent billions in Egypt. Now it remains to make something good come out of it. So far that does not seem to be happening there. It appears that we have succeeded in having both the deposed Egyptian leaders AND the general population hate the US and its leader.

The suggestions made by Mr. Meyer are that we have neglected to truly understand the forces at work in Egypt. In that neglect, we have acted to make the situation there more chaotic and unstable; and we could have done a lot better if the administration had sought out the best minds to make better decisions.

G.Clinchy@gmail.com"Know in your heart that all things are possible. We couldn't conceive of a miracle if none ever happened." -Libby Fudim

​I don't use the PM feature, so just email me direct at the address shown above.

Yesterday El Fagr reported that, during their most recent phone conversation, U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson demanded that Egyptian General Sisi release all Muslim Brotherhood members currently being held for questioning: “And when Sisi rejected this order, the American ambassador began threatening him that Egypt will turn into another Syria and live through a civil war, to which Sisi responded violently: ‘Neither you nor your country can overcome Egypt and its people.’”
Moreover, the day before the Salafi party withdrew from negotiations with the new Egyptian government, Al Nahar reported that Patterson had “incited them [the Nour Party, the Salafi party] to tamper with the political scene and the road map and to threaten to withdraw from political participation if Dr. Muhammad Baradei becomes elected as Prime Minister…”

Apparently, these are the “many forms of pressure” that Patterson earlier assured Hishan Qandil the U.S. would use to reinstate the Brotherhood.

G.Clinchy@gmail.com"Know in your heart that all things are possible. We couldn't conceive of a miracle if none ever happened." -Libby Fudim

​I don't use the PM feature, so just email me direct at the address shown above.

Egypt: Update. Egyptian Army forces killed 10 jihadi fighters in northern Sinai in the past 48 hours, according to state news agency Mena.

The million-man march in support of Mursi apparently did not materialize. Nevertheless, anti-government elements have threatened a large demonstration after prayers on 19 July. The government has promised to protect Egyptians. Expect violent clashes.

G.Clinchy@gmail.com"Know in your heart that all things are possible. We couldn't conceive of a miracle if none ever happened." -Libby Fudim

​I don't use the PM feature, so just email me direct at the address shown above.

The Brotherhood's only reliable partners now are other Islamist groups whose members may be more willing to use violent or radical tactics.

Wonder why nobody bothered to mention this sooner to the policy-makers in DC?

The NY Times:

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"The military needs to be taught a lesson. At this point it's a zero-sum game: it's either the Brotherhood or the old regime."GEHAD EL-HADDAD, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, rallying opposition to the military.

Maybe the military is doing something right if the Brotherhood doesn't like them very much?

Last edited by Gerry Clinchy; 07-30-2013 at 12:11 PM.

G.Clinchy@gmail.com"Know in your heart that all things are possible. We couldn't conceive of a miracle if none ever happened." -Libby Fudim

​I don't use the PM feature, so just email me direct at the address shown above.